Liquor and tobacco were sinful extravagances in the forties;
some time in the eighties or nineties I repeated a story I'd
once heard Dad tell about three cigars, and stopped halfway
through: Holy toledo! My father and my grandfather both
*smoked*! I'd never seen them do it, but the pipes in the
secretary I inherited from Grandmother should have suggested
something to me. I did know that Grandpa chewed tobacco,
but he never chewed in the presence of the children.
One of the men in my parent's circle of friends smoked
cigars; Mom complained when she hosted an event he was
likely to attend. I never saw a cigarette until I was in
high school: mom started working in a mental hospital and
took up smoking in self-defense. (When she quit the job,
she also quit smoking.) I got a summer job as receptionist,
which included the chore of handing out quarters to the
patients so they could buy cigarettes, and was shocked at
how much money they were burning up. (The doctors were the
only people around who acted crazy. Well, there was the
janitor who waxed the floor and then sat down to watch it dry.)
I never saw any beer or wine in the forties, and whiskey was
exceedingly rare. A bottle appeared at a party once, and
everyone had a taste. The only other bottle of whiskey I
saw before the sixties was kept in the cupboard over the
refrigerator with the other medicines. We'd take a
teaspoonful to soothe a sore throat.
Once I was standing on a chair while looking for something
in the medicine cupboard, and had set several things on top
of the fridge to see what was behind them. My father walked
past, paused to pick up the pint of whiskey that had been in
the cabinet since before I was born, chuckled, and said
"The label says this whiskey is guaranteed to be a month old!"
(Well, it couldn't have been in *that* cabinet since 1941;
the cabinets were probably built when we moved back to the
farm after the war and had money Dad had earned at Delco
Remy -- that was when we had electricity and indoor plumbing
installed.) (The windmill tower still stands, but Dad
climbed up and threw the vanes down after one fell off.)
By the fifties, we were rich enough that Mom bought an
occasional bottle of Manichewitz, and I still enjoy a
liqueur glass of blackberry wine once in a while.
--
Joy Beeson
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.
where it's still more-or-less not raining.
Might get the garden weeded.
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